


Prompt - Storm, moister vaporators

by Munnin



Series: The Star Wars Write Stuff challenge. [42]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-21 06:38:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12451703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Munnin/pseuds/Munnin
Summary: Beru watches five year old Luke play and muses on what brought them here.





	Prompt - Storm, moister vaporators

**Author's Note:**

> Written for and beta'd by Obickay. Much gratitude.

Beru stood on the ridge, watching Luke play up by the moister vaporators. Playing with his new toy. A little model star-fighter this time. Made of scapes of metal and duroplast. 

She lied to Owen when he saw it. Said she’d ordered it from Mos Eisley. It was boy’s birthday, after all. He deserved to have something, other than just new clothes. The new clothes had been a necessity. Luke was growing fast. 

Five already. 

It seemed like only yesterday the silver ship landed on the edge of the farm. The dark-haired woman only a few years younger than herself. All smooth, fair skin and expensive clothes. As unlike anyone on Tatooine as it was possible to be. And the young man, so hard edged. So full of rage.

Beru and Padma had sat together, in the little kitchen unit. Padma asked questions about their life here, about Beru’s family and how she met Owen. Padme was a woman of importance, more than Beru would ever be. And yet she managed to make Beru feel important. Like her life here in the sand was worth something. 

Owen had liked Shmi. From the first day Cliegg had brought her home. They all had. Cliegg was never one to keep slaves, it wasn’t in his nature. They all knew from the beginning he had a fondness for her. Her practical simplicity, her gentle charm. 

Beru already had the celebration dinner planned, just waiting for them to announce their engagement. 

And Owen could never begrudge his father a moment of happiness. 

They knew Shmi had a son. That he had left Tatooine to become a Jedi. None of them really knew what that meant. Other than in an abstract kind of way. Jedi were… something from the holo-news. From far, far away. From a war this little dustball of a world had nothing to do with. 

It wasn’t real for them until that silver ship arrived. 

And then it was real. Too real.

But Anakin was gone before then. Off to fight some war on another world. He was gone before the news spread of what had happened out in the Jundland Wastes. Before the reprisal attacks began. 

Anakin wasn’t there to see the cost his actions had on the rest of Tatooine. The way it changed them.

It had left a storm of bitterness Owen held in his heart. The storm that drove him to growl at Ben when the knight had come, cradling a baby boy.

They would give Luke a home. That was never a question. They had tried and failed to have children of their own, and it was an ache that Beru knew Owen felt as keenly as she did. Owen hid it behind bluster – of course they would raise the boy. He was family. It didn’t matter that they shared no blood. The child was Shmi’s grandchild, he belonged, just as she had. 

But Beru knew that behind all that familial obligation, Owen was overjoyed. That at last, they could have the family they always dreamed of. 

But that bitterness would always be there. Now directed at the Jedi. Owen yelled at him to get off their land and never come back. To keep the troubles away from family. Even as Owen held Luke close to his chest. 

But Beru pitied the knight. Every line of his face etched with sadness, with suffering. She would have been glad to take him in too, to give him a home. She didn’t know what had happened but she knew from his face he’d lost more than she would ever understand.

But Ben and Owen rubbed each other wrong. They always had. They always would. 

There was too much history there. For two men who had never met before that day, there was too much between them. 

That was why Beru wanted nothing but happiness for Luke. A simple life, free from the storms of the past. Free from the silver ship and the fields of dead Tuskens. Free from the burning Jedi temple she’d seen on the Holonet. Free from the war. 

Here, playing in the shadow of the vaporators, watched over by a cranky old Treadwell droid, Luke could just be a boy. Making buzzing ship noises as he zoomed the toy ship around his head.

And that’s why Beru could never tell Owen where the toys came from. Would never tell him. Why she got up early, before the second sun had risen, to check Shmi’s grave on this day every year. 

She knew she wouldn’t find him there but she hoped. Hoped that one day she’d meet Ben by Shmi’s grave, delivering the little toy ships for Luke. 

So, she could tell him how Luke was doing, how he had grown. How proud she was of him. How much Luke was loved. 

For the sake of a dark-haired girl who sat in their kitchen and talked.


End file.
